The historical way to capture DC power from an AC source is shown in FIG. 10. The normal residential alternating voltage AC_10 gets transformed down to a lower alternating voltage AC_10b. Diode_10 will peak detect off of AC_10b to charge up capacitor Cfilter_10. Resistor RLOAD_10 represents the circuit being powered up. RLOAD_10 causes the voltage VDC_10, which is across Cfilter_10, to drop slightly until the next time Diode_10 turns on.
The key point to FIG. 10 is that the harvesting of power off of AC_10 is both nonlinear and non consistent. But if the power source AC_10 is consistent in magnitude, frequency, polarity, and shape, then this method causes few problems.
This invention harvests power in a much different way in that the input waveform's characteristics in terms of magnitude, polarity, shape, or up to some limitations frequency, are not critical. And since it works like a resistor, it can be used in dampening and characteristic impedance terminal matching applications.